42
" We hold further that Communism is not only desirable, but that existing societies, founded on Individualism, are inevitably impelled in the direction of Communism. The development of Individualism during the last three centuries is explained by the efforts of the individual to protect himself from the tyranny of Capital and of the State. For a time he imagined, and those who expressed his thought for him declared, that he could free himself entirely from the State and from society. " By means of money," he said, " I can buy all that I need." But the individual was on a wrong tack, and modern history has taught him to recognize that, without the help of all, he can do nothing, although his strong-boxes are full of gold. "
48
" However, questions arise. Are there people who aren't naive realists, or special situations in which naive realism disappears? My theory—the self-model theory of subjectivity—predicts that as soon as a conscious representation becomes opaque (that is, as soon as we experience it as a representation), we lose naive realism. Consciousness without naive realism does exist. This happens whenever, with the help of other, second-order representations, we become aware of the construction process—of all the ambiguities and dynamical stages preceding the stable state that emerges at the end. When the window is dirty or cracked, we immediately realize that conscious perception is only an interface, and we become aware of the medium itself. We doubt that our sensory organs are working properly. We doubt the existence of whatever it is we are seeing or feeling, and we realize that the medium itself is fallible. In short, if the book in your hands lost its transparency, you would experience it as a state of your mind rather than as an element of the outside world. You would immediately doubt its independent existence. It would be more like a book-thought than a book-perception. Precisely this happens in various situations—for example, In visual hallucinations during which the patient is aware of hallucinating, or in ordinary optical illusions when we suddenly become aware that we are not in immediate contact with reality. Normally, such experiences make us think something is wrong with our eyes. If you could consciously experience earlier processing stages of the representation of the book In your hands, the image would probably become unstable and ambiguous; it would start to breathe and move slightly. Its surface would become iridescent, shining in different colors at the same time. Immediately you would ask yourself whether this could be a dream, whether there was something wrong with your eyes, whether someone had mixed a potent hallucinogen into your drink. A segment of the wall of the Ego Tunnel would have lost its transparency, and the self-constructed nature of the overall flow of experience would dawn on you. In a nonconceptual and entirely nontheoretical way, you would suddenly gain a deeper understanding of the fact that this world, at this very moment, only appears to you. "
52
" CAUSE AND EFFECT
You can give a man who has never given you a good word,
Volumes of knowledge.
And you can give a man who has never given you a gift,
A thousand gifts.
You can give that same man who has never given you a blessing,
A thousand blessings.
And you can offer that same man who has never
Offered a hand to help you grow,
Seeds to help him grow a garden.
And while you have never seen true kindness from his direction,
You still offer to help push him up.
And in the end,
He only wants to be the hand that pulls you down.
Do not worry, my friends.
Cause and effect was written by the stars of the universe.
He who passes suffering onto others
Will also have that suffering passed onto his own children.
Gifts he feels he should have in the next lifetime will be unobtainable.
And the help he needs to grow in the next lifetime will be unavailable.
And the people he cuts down that were good to him,
Will cut him down in the next lifetime.
What goes around does come back again,
Even through your children.
There is a vibrational effect
In every action,
Just as there is
A vibration that rings
From every letter
In every word.
No cause occurs without effect
And no effect occurs without cause.
No unjust action goes without penalty
And no action or thought
Flows unnoticed
Throughout
The universe. "
― , Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
55
" There is a code of behavior, she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behooves the woman, whatever her own occupation may be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there smiling. "
― Virginia Woolf , To the Lighthouse
56
" In a world where money, security, children, money, temptation, sex, money, passion and more money is all that women expect of men, that is what men begin to offer. Anyone who has anything different to offer is dismissed, if reluctantly. Men, in their eternal wooing dance, tend to cultivate those qualities which the desired sex expects. What's more, women who gave birth to them and later on rehearse them for their role MAKE them that way, with the help of sisters, mistresses or wives. Those who are too strong or too weak to be thus moulded are cast aside as rejects, socio-sexual-matrimonial drop-outs. The price is paid by humanity as a whole in terms of values. You cannot denigrate a part without diminishing the whole. Women, by relegating man to the status of a working slave, becomes a slave herself. Is diminished morally even if she does remain physically and intellectually superior. Granted that her responsibility for the propagation and survival of the species necessitates her adopting the master role -- she has to have safety, security and comfort, as much as humanly possible, to ensure the continuation of the human race -- it still remains a morally untenable stance. "